Sowande brothers updates at BFI
Among Fela Sowande’s compositions are soundtracks that he wrote for films including The Plainsmen of Barotseland (1943) and African Awakening(1962). He also makes an appearance as a pianist in the 1946 wartime drama The Lisbon Story. All of this means he has featured in the British Film Instituted archives. While doing the research for my last blogpost, I realised something that had confused me in the BFI archives previously – a reference to Olu Sowande as narrator in the documentary Nigerian Harvest (1962) took me to Fela’s page. I assumed that someone had mistakenly made a reference to Fela’s full name (Olufela) and ignored it. When I realised that one of his brothers was called Olu, I got in touch with the BFI and after providing evidence that Olu was a different Sowande, they not only updated the link but created new pages for the remaining brothers so they can be referred to if any one find them in old films or footage.
Mistakes happen with names – especially non-European ones – so much in archives. There must be so many other Black musicians that are lost within them because someone has made what looks like a small mistake that can bury their work for a long time.
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor violin repertoire
Schott Music have recently reprinted Suite de Pièces by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor for violin and piano. It has been available as download only for a while but if, like me, you prefer to perform from printed scores, this is a welcome addition. Thanks to Ian Mylett at Schott for telling me about this.
There are several other works by Coleridge-Taylor that were originally published by Schott but are no longer available. Hopefully, more of these Schott editions will be reissued soon… I’m updating the plainsightSOUND database as this information comes in, so get in touch if I’ve missed anything!
Listen to Suite de Pièces performed by Maria Ioudenitch (violin) and Sahun (Sam) Hong (piano). Maria Ioudenitch performs on the on the Joachim-Ma Stradivarius
Timeline additions
Four new people have been added to the plainsightSOUND timeline – Yinka Sowande, Olu Sowande, Meki Nzewi and Christopher Oyesiku. There are so many more people to add to the timeline and I’m looking for other ways to display this data too. Let me know if you have any more ideas!